Anto Upton talks boxing in our new column

I predicted a points win for John Ryder over Adam Etches at the weekend and I was right. I even said that Ryder may even get the stoppage, which I think he could have done, but he just never really went in for the kill: he’d land good shots, then go back to his boxing.

I watched David Price’s fight, he lost in the seventh round to Christian Hammer. I wanted him to win because he’s a nice fella and we’re signed to the same management team, but he just hasn’t got the fire in his belly anymore, he gave up. For him, it must be so devastating, and I reckon he’ll quit now, which is a shame.

This week, for me, is just business as usual. I have quite a strict routine which works well for me and my brothers Sonny and Paul.

Monday morning I’ll be at the West Ham Gym training hard and doing a bit of strength and conditioning, and then roadwork later at night.

On Tuesday, I’ll be on my own doing a bit of cardio work.

Wednesday is sparring at the gym and, at night, I’ll do more running.

Thursday will be a more relaxing day on the pads and working on technical things with a bit of shadow boxing and some abdominal work. When I say relaxing, it’s hard training still, but just giving the muscles a bit of a shake out on the pads.

Friday will be a hard session with some sparring and then more running and cardio at night.

When I lived in Manchester, we trained at Ricky Hatton’s gym and the routine always worked for me so I’ve carried on with it. We train hard on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; the other days are for recovering, shaking out and ticking over.

Obviously, different gyms have different ideas and, over the years, I’ve taken bits from each ones I’ve trained in, but this is what works well for me so if it’s not broke, then why fix it?

Rest is just as important as the work. When I first turned pro, I had seven fights in the first year, which is really busy for a fighter. You have to know when and how to rest in order to recover well so that you can be 100 per cent for the next training session. The older you get, the more you learn!

I’ll be live on air this Saturday at 4pm on Phoenix FM on their sports show, talking about my next fight. They had triple world champion Ricky Burns on last week. Listeners can tune in on 98FM to hear the interview.